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Search Marketing | Special report

Training update from your digital marketing excellence partner

Getting your search strategy right is key to boosting traffic to your owned media, and increasing the ROMI from your existing investments.

Applying best practice in search engine optimisation will get you free traffic from Google, Bing or Baidu; while paid search gives your brand immediate visibility.

This training update covers the latest research, new tips to improve your effectiveness, case studies, the growing role of Facebook in search, and detailed updates about developments at the main search engines. If you have questions - then simply email us back.

Best from all the Digital Acceleration team

Danny Meadows-Klue
President
Digital Training Academy

Extra advice to build on your training. Need an advanced
search
engine
marketing deep dive? Digital Acceleration Programme 2.0 Live Action Workshops are now available in your market. Email us back for more info...

To get your content discovered, start by thinking about what your consumer is looking for. Identify the specific keyphrase they'd use from your consumer insight tools, and write your content in a way that both answers this question and repeats the keyphrase in the content. Repeating the keyphrase inside the content helps tell a search engine that your web page is about that keyphrase, and this type of 'on-site' search engine optimisation is the starting point for getting free traffic.

If you want to reduce the price of each click you buy in Google, then for each keyphrase you buy, link the advert to a landing page that's all about the same keyphrase. Google rewards you for linking to a "high quality" page by letting you move higher in the column of ads, getting more clicks, and paying less for them!

YouTube is the world's second biggest search engine, and as it's owned by Google, much of the best practice in search is transferable here. Walk through the consumer's journey to see what's already there. When creating your films, apply the same discipline for keyphrases that you would for other content. When considering advertising opportunities, think about targeted YouTube ads.

Getting your content discovered in search engines has been the battle digital
marketers have been fighting for almost 20 years. It's a combination of both art
and science, and there are simple steps that should be on every marketers'
agenda. Full story...

Google's latest launch of its Remarketing for Search product, currently in beta, is a huge step from the standard advertising options that Google Adwords presents, says digital marketing agency, Greenlight. Full story...

More engineering investment from Google means that marketing techniques with
Google maps are going to become more innovative as the maps interface
strengthens, combining Street View and consumer generated content. Full story...

Search engine optimisation remains a tricky balancing act, as the rules constantly change. In this official Google blog post, Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead from Google covers the five most common errors she finds in SEO, and then concludes with six quick tips to make sure you're on the right track.

This chart shows where brands are planning on spending their digital ad budgets. The majority of digital ad spend will be on display ads (41%). Surprisingly more investment will be made on search (19%) and video (14%) than social ads (10%) this year.

The number of searches looking for local goods and services in the US has risen significantly in the past two years, with local searches making up 24% of Google queries, according to new research.
11/10/2012 | Full story...

As technology develops apace, Experian has listed the 5 biggest trends in digital marketing for 2013, including the rise of search engines as portals, social metrics, and updating emails from within the recipients' inbox.
07/02/2013 | Full story...

In this video interview with the Financial Times, WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell provides insights into how the ad giant invested on digital channels during 2012. Speaking to the FT, the WPP boss gave his thoughts on growth in online advertising.
Watch the video from the FT below:
11/12/2012 | Full story...

In February 2013, Interflora disappeared from the front page of Google's natural search results, fuelling speculation that the florist has breached the search engine's guidelines.
07/03/2013 | Full story...

Domestic hunger charity Feeding America looked to share their web site content on Twitter to maximize traffic back to their website. The charity targeted audiences who often tweeted about topics very similar to Feeding America's site content.
20/12/2012 | Full story...

Converse, the global footwear brand, took a novel and innovative way to connect with their teenage audience online. They took the Google paid search channel and turned an advertising space into a game experience.
06/12/2012 | Full story...

Launched in August 2008, 4Music is the most watched music channel in the UK. It is free to air, and part of the Box TV music channel portfolio. This case study shows how the a multi-layered digital campaign was used to elevate the brand and increase the value of 4Music.com to its advertisers.
14/09/2012 | Full story...

This case study from Conserve has to be the most innovative approach to search engine marketing that we have ever seen. In order to connect with their youth audience in a highly targeted and personal way Converse exploited the search engines results page by cleverly bidding on long tail keyphrases that they could assume were teenager generated.
25/05/2012 | Full story...

Facebook has overhauled its search engine in a bid to take on Google, letting users search for people, photos, places and other content that has already been shared on the social network. At a 'mystery event' from the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the service, dubbed Graph Search.
Watch Zuckerberg talk about the new service here:

As social media and search converge, Facebook is in a unique position to rival Google's dominance in the coming years. A new survey reveals that Mark Zuckerberg's plans to mix social with search could give Google a run for their (advertising) money.
17/09/2012 | Full story...

Video is the most powerful way to tell stories, and whether on your own websites, as pre-rolls in a paid environment, or on one of the big video distribution platforms, it's key element of the digital mix for most brands.

Online advertising is only a small part of the digital media mix today, but remains an effective way of instantly reaching the mass market with the right message at the right time for the right consumer.

Google has revamped its hugely popular search advertising system AdWords with 'Enhanced Campaigns', letting advertisers target people by 'situation' rather than device.
Watch a demonstration of how the service works below:

The pattern of access is shifting fast to mobile with social networks and major online services now seeing mobile as the primary media. Smart brands connect apps, mobile sites and optimised web pages together into a seamless consumer journey.

Google has launched 'Free Zone', a new mobile web service aimed at giving millions of people in the developing world to access the Internet (and Google's ads) via basic mobile phones without data charges.
09/11/2012 | Full story...

Ecommerce is a permanent shift in the behaviour of consumers and organisations. As it crosses its tipping point in each market, it creates a new structure for how the ecosystem works, so smart firms are using the new approaches to connect differently with suppliers and customers, boosting sales further through optimisation, ratings and reviews.

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